15 Pieces of Classical Music About Trains

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

Composers have always been inspired by trains, and it’s easy to understand why: the rhythmic chugging of steam engines, the sweeping landscapes viewed from a train window, and the sense of adventure and nostalgia associated with rail travel…

All of these sounds, sights, and feelings have inspired composers to create music that continues to resonate with audiences today.

All aboard as we chug through fifteen pieces of classical music about trains!

Eisenbahn-Lust Waltz by Johann Strauss I (1836) 

Johann Strauss I (the father of the composer of The Blue Danube) was a well-known composer and orchestra leader who wrote many pieces for various dances and celebrations.

In 1836, he wrote this ebullient waltz (which translates into “Train Ride Fun”) to celebrate the construction of early railroads. They were just beginning to connect communities near Vienna to the city proper.

Mikhail Glinka: Travelling Song from A Farewell to Saint Petersburg (1840) 

This work comes from a larger suite of works called A Farewell to St. Petersburg.

Glinka was going through a tough patch at the time, as his marriage was disintegrating (his wife would ultimately leave him for another man). He poured some of his personal feelings about turmoil and transition into this set of songs.

The frantic Travelling Song takes inspiration from the perpetual motion of steam locomotives – and probably the composer’s desire to escape his difficult circumstances!

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Le Chemin de Fer (1844) 

Charles-Valentin Alkan was once viewed as one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century, but after being passed over for a prestigious teaching position at the Paris Conservatoire, he largely withdrew from public life.

Today, he is best known for his personal eccentricity and the wonderfully original and staggeringly challenging piano music he left behind.

Although Strauss and Glinka’s works came earlier, this is the first work to graphically portray the sounds and motions of a train. It’s sometimes characterized as banal, but no one can deny that it’s fun!

Hector Berlioz: Le Chant des chemins de fer (1846) 

Le Chant des chemins de fer translates into Railroad Song.

Somewhat amusingly to modern ears, it’s a whole cantata for orchestra and voices dedicated to glorifying the French railroad (as well as a celebration of the labour of all those who made its construction possible).

The occasion of its composition was the opening of the Gare de Lille, the main railroad station in Lille, France.

Berlioz wrote this work over the course of three nights for the money. He wanted a cannonade to go off in the final chords for maximum drama, but unfortunately, one couldn’t be located in time for his grand artistic vision.

Hans Christian Lumbye: Copenaghen Steam Railway Galop (1847) 

Here’s another work composed to celebrate the opening of a railroad. This time, it was the opening of the first railroad in Denmark, which ran between Copenhagen and Roskilde.

Lumbye, a well-known composer of light music, pulled out all the train-based stops here. A bell clangs; whistles go off; percussion instruments unite to imitate the huff and puff of a steam-powered train rushing off to its new destination.

Lustfahrten, Walzer by Eduard Strauss (1879-80) 

Like father, like son! Eduard Strauss, like his father Johann Strauss I, also wrote a work to honour the railroad, this one called Lustfahrten, or “Pleasure Trips.”

It was dedicated to the “Comité des Eisenbahnballes” (The Railway Ball Committee). Presumably, every attendee present found it transporting.

The Great Crush Collision March by Scott Joplin (1896) 

Here’s one of the stranger entries on this list.

In 1896, a man named William George Crush, an agent with the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad decided it would be a good idea to get rid of two of the railroad’s old locomotives by staging a massive trainwreck and selling train tickets to transport eager spectators directly to the scene of the crash.

A bespoke temporary town was built to accommodate the expected crowds. In the end, forty thousand people showed up!

Unfortunately, the crash turned into a disaster. The locomotives’ boilers exploded on impact, and two spectators died in the aftermath.

This extraordinary event was memorialized by up-and-coming composer Scott Joplin, who wrote a strangely upbeat piano piece portraying the deadly disaster.

Of special note are the notes he wrote in the score: “the noise of the trains while running at the rate of ninety miles an hour” and “the collision” (marked fortissimo, of course).

Pacific 231 by Arthur Honegger (1923) 

French composer Arthur Honegger was obsessed with trains. “I have always loved locomotives passionately,” he wrote. “For me, they are living creatures, and I love them as others love women or horses.”

So it makes sense that one of his first big successes was Pacific 231, an imaginative orchestral work that gives the impression of an ever-accelerating train.

It’s easy to tell from moment to moment what stage of its journey the train is in. Six boisterous minutes in, the train decelerates and arrives safely at the station.

Charles Ives: The Celestial Railroad (ca 1924) 

New England composer Charles Ives based his piano work The Celestial Railroad on the work of another New Englander: Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his short story of the same name.

In Hawthorne’s story, the narrator takes a train from the city of Destruction to the Celestial City. He begins talking with Mr. Smooth-It-Away, who is an expert on all things Celestial City, despite having never been there before. The story ends with Mr. Smooth-It-Away revealing his true form as a kind of demon. Luckily, in the end, it turns out to be a dream.

This work satirises the utopian and religious movements common in Hawethorne’s day, and Ives clearly enjoyed exploring the story’s themes in his own music.

When Ives wrote his fourth symphony, he adapted The Celestial Railroad into the symphony’s second movement.

Vladimir Deshevov: Rails (1926) 

There’s not a lot of information available online about composer Vladimir Deshevov besides the fact that he was born in 1889 and died in 1955.

However, this evocative fleeting portrait of a speeding train deserves a spot on this list, anyway!

Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Little Train of Caipira from Bachianas brasileiras No. 2 (1930) 

Translated into rough English, “Bachianas brasileiras” means “Bach-inspired Brazilian pieces.”

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a series of them, combining the European classical tradition with folk music influences from South America.

The finale of the second Bachiana Brasileira is called The Little Train of the Caipira. (A caipira is a person from a more rural area in Brazil.)

This piece follows the caipira’s journey through the countryside of Brazil. It’s up to listeners to decide what happens once the train decelerates and pulls into the station.

Benjamin Britten: Night Mail (1936) 

In 1935, British directors Harry Watt and Basil Wright created a twenty-minute documentary about the distribution of mail in Britain. It may have been an unassuming subject, but the work turned into a classic.

Poet and author W.H. Auden was involved with the production and wrote poetry for it. Meanwhile, his creative partner, composer Benjamin Britten, wrote the score.

The two men fused their efforts in this unusual spoken-word piece featuring both Auden’s poetry and Britten’s music.

Bohuslav Martinů: Le Train Hanté (1937) 

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů wrote Le Train hante, or The Haunted Train, in 1937 for that year’s World Exhibition in Paris.

The work isn’t about passenger trains but rather an amusement park train ride, which explains the music’s manic, fairground-like qualities.

Steve Reich: Different Trains (1988) 

Steve Reich’s Different Trains was inspired by the fact that, as a Jewish American boy born in 1936, Reich often took train rides across the country to see his relatives. Once he got older, he realised that if he’d been born in Europe at the same time, he might have been forced to ride a train to another destination: a concentration camp.

The work is scored for string quartet and tape. The tapes include interviews with Americans reminiscing about their train journeys and Europeans describing their experiences on trains during the Holocaust. The sounds of sirens, whistles, trains, and even a string quartet were also recorded and woven into the music.

Ian Clarke: The Great Train Race (1993) 

Composer Ian Clarke describes this train-inspired showstopper for flute-like so:

Techniques include residual/breathy fast tonguing, multiphonics, singing & playing, lip bending, explosive harmonics and an optional circular breathing section. A forward with explanations of the techniques is given along with fingerings in the score for easy reference. The multiphonics used are of the more friendly variety; seven from only four different fingerings.

It is astonishing to hear how a talented flutist can evoke an entire train with no other instruments present!

Conclusion

These fifteen pieces of classical music about trains have taken us on quite a musical journey. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. Mind the gap as you disembark onto the platform!

Composers Like Chopin: Ten Composers to Check Out

By Emily E.Hogstad, Interlude

Delicacy. Poignancy. Romance. These are just a few of the words often associated with Frédéric Chopin‘s timeless compositions for piano.

Frédéric Chopin © ClassicFM

That said, Chopin’s music doesn’t have a monopoly on those adjectives.

Today, we’re looking at ten works by ten composers who, just like Chopin, understood the piano’s expressive power…while forging their own creative identities, too.

If you’re looking for music like Chopin’s, here are ten suggestions for your playlist:

John Field (1782-1837)

Pianist and composer John Field was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1782.

He studied with Muzio Clementi in London and toured Europe with him, finally settling in St. Petersburg in 1802.

John Field, 1820

In his late twenties, he began experimenting musically. He started writing short pieces for solo piano featuring an arpeggiated accompaniment in the left hand and a highly chromatic melody in the right hand. These pieces would usually be poetic and melancholy in nature. He called them “Nocturnes.” And so a new genre of piano music was born, that Chopin would later perfect.

You can hear Field’s influence in Chopin’s nocturnes.

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) 

Maria Szymanowska was born Marianna Agata Wołowska in Warsaw in 1789.

Maria Szymanowska

In 1810, she married a man named Józef Szymanowski, a wealthy landowner, and she also made her public debut as a pianist.

Many women musicians of this era gave up their careers once they got married, but not Szymanowska. Ultimately, she split from her husband and began touring Europe, spending a great deal of time in St. Petersburg. (And in case you’re wondering, yes, she did cross paths with Field!) She died there in 1831 during a cholera epidemic.

Musicologist Sławomir Dobrzański writes, “Szymanowska’s musical style is parallel to the compositional starting point of Frédéric Chopin; many of her compositions had an obvious impact on Chopin’s mature musical language.”

Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857)

Glinka was born in Russia in 1804. He attended a school in St. Petersburg for children of the nobility and took three lessons from John Field while there.

Portrait of Mikhail Glinka, 1840

When he became an adult, he joined the Foreign Office, but by night, he kept pursuing music. He ultimately developed a great passion for expressing Russian nationalism in music, and encouraging a specifically Russian school of music.

Most of his best-known music dates from after that revelation. However, the music from his young dilettante days – like this Nocturne from 1828 – feels similar in some ways to Chopin’s and certainly reveals Field’s influence.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) 

Liszt and Chopin met at the latter’s first Parisian concert in 1832. They moved in the same aristocratic Parisian circles and their lives shared important themes, chief among them their devotion to their respective homelands (Hungary and Poland).

Franz Liszt, 1847

They respected each other a great deal, and Liszt was deeply saddened by Chopin’s early death in 1849. Liszt went so far as to write a biography in memory of his friend.

It is believed that Liszt’s third Consolation in D-flat major is modeled after Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27, No. 2. This piece by Liszt was published in 1850, the year after Chopin’s death.  

Clara Schumann (1819-1896) 

Clara Wieck, who became known as Clara Schumann after her marriage to composer Robert Schumann, began championing the works of Chopin when she was a child prodigy touring across Europe.

Robert and Clara Schumann

In 1832, the same year that Liszt and Chopin met, a young Clara Wieck heard Chopin in concert. She never forgot the experience.

Clara Wieck Schumann was always excited to play any new music that Chopin would write. She continued playing Chopin for decades after his death at important and prestigious venues, helping to ensure that he would stay in the repertoire. She ultimately emerged as one of the greatest pianists of her generation, and she brought Chopin’s music with her on that journey.

When Chopin came to visit her in 1836, she played this Chopinesque nocturne for him, as well as a variety of other pieces. He was delighted.

Thomas Tellefsen (1823-1874) 

Pianist and composer Thomas Tellefsen was born in Trondheim, Norway, in 1823.

As a young man, it became his dream to study with Chopin, and so he left his native Norway for Paris.

Thomas Tellefsen

Unfortunately for Tellefsen, however, not just anyone could study with Chopin; he was in high demand as a teacher.

Luckily, in 1844, Chopin’s partner, authoress George Sand, put in a good word for Tellefsen, and Chopin accepted him as a student. Chopin was impressed by his talent, and eventually, the two men became friends and traveling companions.

Chopin viewed Tellefsen as a major pedagogical heir, tasking him with writing a pianoforte method based on what he’d learned. However, if Tellefsen did complete it, no record of it exists.

What does exist are his compositions in a style a la Chopin.

Carl Filtsch (1830-1845) 

Carl Filtsch was born in present-day Romania in 1830. He was a child prodigy, and his family relocated to Paris when he was eleven so he could take lessons from Chopin.

Chopin didn’t teach children, but he made an exception for Filtsch. Indeed, he started teaching him three lessons a week.

Carl Filtsch

Filtsch eventually began touring Europe to acclaim, but he died of tuberculosis in Venice when he was only fifteen years old.

One of Chopin’s friends wrote in 1843 that, “My God! What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has…It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way.”

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Play

Chopin died when Fauré was only a few years old, but something about Chopin’s brand of poignancy and elegance spoke to the Frenchman. When Fauré began writing his own nocturnes in the mid-1870s, he reached back to an earlier generation for inspiration.

John Singer Sargent: Gabriel Fauré, 1896

Fauré, like Chopin, was obsessed with writing for piano. “In piano music, there’s no room for padding – one has to pay cash and make it consistently interesting. It’s perhaps the most difficult genre of all,” he wrote.

His first nocturne, dating from ca. 1875, features an opening theme that immediately recalls to mind Chopin’s Prelude in E-minor.

Even when the nocturne wanders into more experimental harmonies or rhythms, a Chopinesque character still remains.

Juliusz Zarębski (1854-1885) 

Juliusz Zarębski was born in 1854 in present-day Ukraine, a country that in the past had been under Polish rule. His hometown Zhytomyr is between Kyiv (two hours away by car) and Warsaw (nine hours).

Juliusz Zarębski

Zarębski studied in Rome and St. Petersburg as a young man, taking lessons from Liszt and setting to music work by poet Adam Mickiewicz (who, interestingly, was Maria Szymanowska’s son-in-law). He spent formative time in places that were deeply influenced by Chopin’s own influences, and it shows.

Tragically, his life path followed Chopin’s in a grim way: he became ill with tuberculosis and died at the age of 31. He left behind a catalog of lovely music, perfect for a Chopin listener looking for something fresh.

Rosemary Brown (1916-2001)

Rosemary Brown was a psychic medium from twentieth century Britain who claimed to channel the works of the great composers.

Rosemary Brown

The story of Rosemary Brown’s musical career is odd and fascinating. To make a long story short, Brown said that she could communicate with dead composers. (For what it’s worth, she claimed that Chopin was horrified by television.)

During their interactions, the composers dictated pieces to her in a variety of ways. She said that Chopin wrote this one.

Is this piece really Chopin composing from the afterlife? Well, frankly, deciding that is a bit beyond our pay grade, but you’re free to believe whatever you want! If nothing else, it’s a great story.

Conclusion

Regardless of what you think about the work of Rosemary Brown, here’s the truth: Chopin didn’t need a psychic medium to speak through the music of those who came after him.

Many composers shared his artistic priorities and delicate touch and wrote incredibly poignant, romantic pieces of Chopinesque music that we can still enjoy today. We hope you enjoy our picks!

Glinka: Ruslan and Ludmila - Overture (Benjamin Zander, Boston Philharmonics

Benjamin Zander (conductor)

Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra

November 2, 2015, Symphony Hall, Boston